The above photo shows Horace Wilson standing at right.
Horace Wilson was a young man fresh out of the equivalent of high school when he joined the Union Army around 1862. In 1872, 150 years ago, he is credited with introducing baseball to Japan and has been inducted in Japan’s Baseball Hall of Fame. According to the New York Times, Wilson’s family believes that he may have learned baseball as a teenager at Kents Hill School, a boarding academy in Maine. During the Civil War, Wilson served with the 12th Maine Infantry Regiment in Louisiana In 1864 it was moved to the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia and later to Georgia.
After the war, Wilson was recruited to teach English at a Japanese college. In 1872 he decided to teach his students to play baseball as a form of physical exercise. While this was likely not the first game of baseball ever played in Japan, it was popular among American sailors who may have played it during a visit a year earlier, Wilson’s teaching of the sport is credited by historians as the beginning of the sport’s long tenure in Japan.
In August, the New York Mets had a celebration at Citifield of the 150th Anniversary of Wilson’s introduction of baseball to Japan.
Wilson was born in Gorham, Maine, in the southeastern portion of the state, and his family still owns the farm that he grew up on. The family was unaware of his role in starting baseball in Japan until they were contacted in 2000 when the effort to induct Wilson into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame got underway. According to the New York Times:
“Of course, the family knew of Horace Wilson, but no one had any idea that he ever went to Japan,” said Scott Balcomb, whose wife, Abigail, is a great-granddaughter of Horace’s younger brother, Elbridge Wilson.
Baseball is a major sport in Japan and the national team won the Gold Medal in the Olympics last year.
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